U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus (L) testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the implementation of the decision to open all ground combat units to women on Capitol Hill in Washington, February 2, 2016. Seated beside Mabus are Under Secretary of the Army Patrick Murphy (C) and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.

Navy Bureaucracy Has No Idea How To Make Job Title ‘Yeoman’ Gender-Neutral

But up to this point, Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Michael D. Stevens has rejected all these new alternatives to the administrative position of yeoman, The New York Times reports.

As part of the effort to integrate women into all combat roles, the Navy has pushed to make job titles with the word “man” more gender neutral, preferring titles like “technician” and “specialist” over “rifleman,” “mineman,” and “assault man.”

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has been at the forefront of making the service more hospitable to women. He opened submarines to women in 2010, and in 2015, he tripled maternity leave to lower the number of women dropping out of the Navy. He also has advocated to open all combat roles to women and bashed Marine Corps leadership for submitting an exemption recommending otherwise. Despite a Marine Corps study showing that mixed-gender units vastly underperformed relative to male-only units, Mabus insisted first that the study was biased, and second said that even if the study were solid, at least some women would be able to make the cut, so opening all combat roles to women was the right step to take.

For Mabus, changing job titles is clearly the next step to making women feel more comfortable.

No title modifications are yet final, but in the next few weeks, Mabus will deliver formal recommendations.

“There may be a few iconic titles you are not going to change because they are so deeply rooted and have been there for so long that they don’t denote gender,” Mabus told The New York Times.

His singular obsession with increasing diversity in the military has led GOP Rep. [crscore]Duncan Hunter[/crscore] to call for his resignation.

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